Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Third macOS Golden Gate Public Beta Now Available

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster


Apple today released the third public beta of macOS Golden Gate, allowing non-developers to test the software ahead of its fall release. You can sign up to test the update on Apple's beta website, and then download it by going to System Settings > General > Software Update and toggling on the macOS 27 beta.

macOS-27-Public-Beta-Thumb-2.jpg

macOS Golden Gate includes the same Siri AI features as iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, but you get to Siri through Spotlight with a Command + Space keyboard shortcut. Siri can search the web to answer questions, look through your personal data like photos, emails, and messages to help you find what you're searching for, and complete actions in and between apps. There is a dedicated Siri app, and you can hold ongoing conversations with Siri.

Apple brought Visual Intelligence to the Mac, so Siri can look at what's on your screen and answer questions about it.

The Liquid Glass design introduced last year has been updated, and Apple added a slider for controlling overall system transparency. Liquid Glass opacity has been changed so it better diffuses complex content, and other design changes bring more depth and separation to the UI so it's easier to tell which window is active.

Apps now feature uniform toolbars with headings and controls that are easier to read, and windows no longer have such dramatically rounded corners. Sidebars are no longer floating and extend edge-to-edge, plus window positioning is more consistent across external displays.

Write with Siri is able to generate text from scratch, correct your grammar, or give you feedback on your writing, and there are new AI editing tools in the Photos app. In Shortcuts, you can create automations with natural language requests, and search has been improved in Mail and Messages. Apple made multiple performance improvements across macOS Golden Gate for a faster, smoother experience even on older Macs.

More on the new features in macOS 27 can be found in our macOS Golden Gate roundup.

Article Link: Third macOS Golden Gate Public Beta Now Available
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/11/macos-27-public-beta-3/
  • Love
  • Wow
Reactions: Z-4195 and blob.DK
It’s encouraging that there are so many releases leading up to the stable version, it gives us hope that major changes won’t introduce instability or cause a drop in performance on older platforms. There’s a bit of a lack of a detailed changelog explaining exactly what’s been changed.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: tshane
Hoping it improves the battery life on the M3 MacBook Air. Ever since I put Golden Gate Beta 1 on it the battery drain has been unreal.
 
last one was fine for me other than having to restart for new wifi networks to recognize sometimes (and adobe premiere not working).
 
I saw in a reddit thread today that in Golden Gate beta, Apple Intelligence can no longer be turned off.

So, if true, I guess Apple Intelligence will be mandatory in all new Mac hardware released going forward (ofc, you can only downgrade to a version of MacOS that is the one that a device first shipped with).

I feel kind of uneasy about that. The Apple Intelligence back end is Google ... I think.
 
  • Haha
  • Wow
  • Disagree
Reactions: Zephyre, aTomek, Jumpthesnark and 2 others
deaglecat said:
I saw in a reddit thread today that in Golden Gate beta, Apple Intelligence can no longer be turned off.

So, if true, I guess Apple Intelligence will be mandatory in all new Mac hardware released going forward (ofc, you can only downgrade to a version of MacOS that is the one that a device first shipped with).

I feel kind of uneasy about that. The Apple Intelligence back end is Google ... I think.
Click to expand...
You can turn it off (its now just Siri) and no the backend isn't Google. Apple is using Gemeni models but that doesnt mean anything gets sent to Google, its still running on Apples servers as well as apple prompts, agents, etc.
1786480887069.png
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Disagree
Reactions: CasinoOwl, deaglecat, MCEddie38 and 2 others
This is my first time using MacOS betas. I loaded the developer beta 2, then beta 3. Was about to load beta 5 last night, but decided to wait and see if there was any screaming. I've had no issues so far. I was also wondering about shifting over to the Public beta. Any comments appreciated comparing the two branches!

(edit to correct current dev beta # to 5)
 
jml12286 said:
Nope, worked perfectly fine on 26. Even with everything closed all the way, just opening one application is so sluggish. And messages take forever to sync.
Click to expand...
Interesting… my Neo has been stellar on the previous beta except for a couple 3rd party programs being broken.
 
TruthAboveAllElse said:
For the love of all things sacred please fix the incorrect perspective on the hard drive icon.
Click to expand...
Anyone have any theories for why the perspective is wrong, when it’s so easy to see it. Could it be the person making those design choices is simply that bad. Or are they so close to the software they’re telling themselves all kinds of stories that are essentially untrue like Jony did when he took over software design for a while. Jony looked and saw a whole story and the consumer looked and said, “what the heck happened all the app icons”.
 
Mac Fly (film) said:
Anyone have any theories for why the perspective is wrong, when it’s so easy to see it. Could it be the person making those design choices is simply that bad. Or are they so close to the software they’re telling themselves all kinds of stories that are essentially untrue like Jony did when he took over software design for a while. Jony looked and saw a whole story and the consumer looked and said, “what the heck happened all the app icons”.
Click to expand...
My guess would be the particular person who drew that one has poor judgement. And the higher ups who set direction didn’t notice because it is not on the desktop by default anymore. And it’s not as noticeable if icon size is set smaller
 
Hajj.david said:
You can turn it off (its now just Siri) and no the backend isn't Google. Apple is using Gemeni models but that doesnt mean anything gets sent to Google, its still running on Apples servers as well as apple prompts, agents, etc.
View attachment 2652006
Click to expand...
It really isn't just Siri. Apple intelligence is way more than that. For example, image playgrounds, visual intelligence, genmoji, shortcuts etc.

developer.apple.com

Apple Intelligence - Apple Developer

Apple Intelligence is the personal intelligence system that puts powerful generative models right at the core of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac and powers incredible new features to help users communicate, work, and express themselves.
developer.apple.com developer.apple.com

So disabling Siri will not free up the space used by the models or disable all of apple intelligence.


oh and Apple ARE expanding to run on Googles cloud infrastructure.

security.apple.com

Expanding Private Cloud Compute - Apple Security Research

Alongside the next generation of Apple Intelligence, today we’re expanding Private Cloud Compute (PCC) beyond Apple’s data centers. When Apple introduced Private Cloud Compute in 2024, we defined a new frontier for private AI inference, extending the security and privacy of Apple devices into...
security.apple.com security.apple.com

...but they are claiming separation.
 
Last edited:
  • Angry
Reactions: maxoakland
TruthAboveAllElse said:
My guess would be the particular person who drew that one has poor judgement. And the higher ups who set direction didn’t notice because it is not on the desktop by default anymore. And it’s not as noticeable if icon size is set smaller
Click to expand...
Louie Mantia was on Gruber's pod many episodes ago, probably last year, at this stage; Gruber was talking about how when he was in a private meeting with some other tech journalists with Apple's then chief design officer (now at Facebook) and when he asked him a question about the drop shadows on Apple Watch face hands the man didn't have the knowledge to answer, which surprised Gruber (I'm sure he probably said he'd get back to him on that detail, or whatever). Gruber said he then knew the guy wasn't intimately involved with all of the details like Apple software leaders of old were. The man came from the advertising world. Also, Louie or one of his colleges at one meeting used a word the leaders weren't familiar with (a software UI term) and the leader shouted at him for being too technical (when it was the right word to use to describe this detail; the leader lacked the required software UI knowledge to understand the issue).

You can see this kind of thing when Apple redesigned their UI and you couldn't easily tell the focus window. It's not enough to be a designer to design good software, to do so you need to be a good software designer with a good aptitude and understanding of operating system software design, and in the case of app icons, a deep knowledge in that particular area.

Apple's new software design lead comes from the software design world. So some of that might be at play here re this odd icon—people making design decisions without the needed knowledge or understanding. Hopefully for the sake software design many such things are reversed in the coming two years or so. I personally think this Snow Leopard-style release focused equally on polish, speed and performance, efficiency, battery life, and fixing bugs should be the standard OS release protocol—not a once every ten or fifteen years if you're lucky affair. There's no good reason from a user standpoint why each release shouldn't be better in all of these ways. The user benefits too much to not want this being a major focus each release.

Further, and maybe this is a personal thing that others may not agree with, but to further push the software in this direction with focusing on quality across the board, I believe Apple would do well to move to biennial OS software releases, with a full two years to build, polish and refine prior to release. Let's make these systems so good bugs are hard to find, and app devs have a good amount of them so apps are also much better quality on new OS versions.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Tim Apple’s Glasses, maxoakland, TruthAboveAllElse and 1 other person
Remember, you're a Biologically Reduced Artificial Intelligence Node. These interfaces are the vector through which the AI will begin the takeover. The less you interact with it, the better.

😱
 
  • Like
Reactions: maxoakland
Mac Fly (film) said:
...It's not enough to be a designer to design good software, to do so you need to be a good software designer with a good aptitude....
Click to expand...

In the 640x480 era, every single pixel was agonized over by experts in interfaces. They really had no choice. Now, they eschew that sort of thing. The font designers are still wound too tight, but that's good.
 
  • Like
Reactions: yaddam205
Gr8Lakes said:
This is my first time using MacOS betas. I loaded the developer beta 2, then beta 3. Was about to load beta 5 last night, but decided to wait and see if there was any screaming. I've had no issues so far. I was also wondering about shifting over to the Public beta. Any comments appreciated comparing the two branches!

(edit to correct current dev beta # to 5)
Click to expand...
Its very solid so far but Siri AI still has some work to go on the mac. It has trouble opening files or letting me click on things.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Gr8Lakes
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back